Occasionally, a digital glitch means old stories reappear on the front pages of news sites. Sometimes this can be funny, most times just plain confusing.
But today's fuckup of multiple republished stories on the Sydney Morning Herald website is shocking, jarring, particularly if you hadn't seen or heard the news for a day or so, and smh.com.au was the first website you visited. No-one would blame you if you thought for a few sickening moments you'd missed another horrifying bushfire holocaust :
Oops.
But when the mistake was corrected, this graphic on the alleged nuclear weapons threat from Iran appeared instead :
It, too, is old news. In this case, long discredited news, but the casual reader would assume that Iran already has nuclear weapons (it doesn't) and that it has threatened other countries with nuclear annihilation (it hasn't).
Just remember when Fairfax columnists start complaining about Murdoch journos campaigning for War On Iran that the Sydney Morning Herald was there creating a reality for war from Day One.
